Monday, November 21, 2005

All quiet on the northern front...

When I got back into blogging I said I was going to try and put up at least one post a day. And while I haven't done that, I don't think I've gone two days in a row before. And there have been many days where I've posted multiple items. So I think I'm doing pretty good.

I didn't post anything on the weekend because I was in a fairly bad mood. Granted, me being in a bad mood normally produces some of my best writing. I've joked with Cathy that I blame her, at least partially, for the hit in the quality of my writing the past few years. I write better when I'm angry. I haven't had a sustainably long burst of being angry (I was, in fact, bitter and angry most of the time between 1994 until 2001) since I've been with her. I was too happy.

Writing goes down the crappper, but I'm madly in love....eh, it's a fair cop.

Anyway, on Friday I got a PFO letter on a job that I thought I stood an excellent chance of getting, but I didn't even manage to get an interview for it. This Wednesday will mark three months since we moved to Iqaluit. So the combination of those factors left me in a pretty foul mood on Friday. It dissipated, slowly, over the weekend.

No one was predicting it was going to take this long for me to find a job. Cathy thought about 10 days. I thought about 2-3 weeks. And there are jobs here, but I'm either not qualified for them (construction) or vastly overqualified for them (cashier at NorthMart or Subway).

Even if I wanted to do those latter jobs, odds are I wouldn''t get them anyway. With my skills, they would view me as a waste of time to hire. By the time they trained me, I would be onto something that paid better. That was what was told me when I applied for the DJ position with Raven Rock.

With Christmas break rapidly closing in and the odds of getting a government job taking a hit (not impossible, but just less likely than I had hoped) it's looking like it might be sometime in late January before I get a job. Something might come up, you never know. And it's not like we're hurting for money. Between Cathy's salary and my EI, we're doing fine.

It's just frustrating when there are jobs that you know you can do and it looks like rules are preventing you from even getting a shot an an interview. Still, I have to refocus now. Send out more resumes. Be less dependent on hoping to land a government position and just start hitting Iqaluit with resumes in the hopes that something good pops up. This is the longest I've been unemployed since 1996. It was fun while it lasted and I didn't mind the break to recharge the batteries. But I'm ready to get going again.

4 comments:

Jason Bartlett
said...

Ah unemployment, you'know Craig it could be worst you could be unemployed in St.John's. As it is now though you provide me with a useful and informative five minute distraction with your blogging. Almost on par with the Peter David site, and of course miles above Duleepa.com

Hi TB, Enjoy your blog, there is no shortage of opinions and the like from TB’s and other Island centric pundits but yours is not overly political and at times, very few times actually, you have given some insight into life in the North.Being in Northern Labrador I would be very interested of any opinions you have of life up there, you have the skills, why not use them?

Just a thought, but have you integrated into the northern culture [for want of a better word] at all? I understand that is not always easy to do and it depends a lot on both parties getting involved, but one should give it a try at least.Perhaps in would open up more job opportunities?

1. Thanks for the kind words, Jason. I'd say you were on drugs to compare anything written here to Peter David, but you're in Qatar, so I kind of figure that's unlikely. I'll attribute it to sunstroke instead.

But yeah, obviously this is much better than duleepa.com....

2. Brian, you gave me something to think about, which I believe I shall be posting on the main site later today.

3. Thanks for the boost, Nancy. The thing that got me on Friday was discovering that I was a tier further down on the pecking order than I thought for government jobs. The first tier is Land Claims Beneficaries, which is fine. They should get first shot at all jobs.

Second tier is government employees, again, which is fine. Everybody hires internally before going outside looking for someone.

I thought I was in the third tier, which is people living in Iqaluit. But I'm not. The third tier is people who have been living in Iqaluit for a year or more. Then it's me, in the fourth tier. The fifth tier is people applying from outside the region.

I understand why they did it. Because the population is so transitory up here, they put in an extra safeguard to prevent constantly losing new people. But myself and Cathy spent close to $15,000 to move up here. She has a full-time, perminent teaching job and government subsidized housing. We're not going anywhere for years.

But that's not being taken into account, which really annoyed me.

But Jason is right, it would be worse in St. John's. I would already be panicking about finding a job in St. John's with 8-9 months of EI left. I'll have something by then.